Obscene Creatures, Resilient Terrains

Eva Papamargariti and Theo Triantafyllidis

12 May — 17 Jun 2017

Assembly Point is delighted to present ‘Obscene Creatures, Resilient Terrains’, an exhibition of new work by Eva Papamargariti and Theo Triantafyllidis. Both artists work with digital technologies to create 3D animated spaces and simulations. For this collaborative exhibition they bring together video, digital forms and printed material to explore ideas around landscape, nature and technology.

The difference between nature and landscape is the presence of humans.

In ‘Obscene Creatures, Resilient Terrains’, concepts of nature and technology are documented in the form of an ongoing dialogue: What is nature and what is technology in the absence of human intention and intervention? How would entropy work if suddenly all humanity were to disappear from the face of the earth, but all of its technological infrastructure was left to run its course unsupervised? How would future technological relics begin a conversation with natural networks and what new economies of survival would emerge?

These questions have led the artists to present a narrative of underlying forces that shape what we perceive as our environment, intact or constructed. It is a story of alien invasive species, hijacking the e-commerce infrastructure of Amazon and eBay to sprawl around the planet. Concealed, amorphous and abstracted organisms, trying to trick the all-seeing algorithms of machine vision, manufacturing mechanisms to survive and dominate over land and other critters. It is nature adapting to fight the threat of an A.I. singularity, and the singularity trying to understand and map the vast network of Gaia and come to a mutual agreement on managing the planet’s resources; engaging in a dual game of mimicking behaviors that dissolve the boundaries between natural and artificial.

This story is told through a mysterious eye that traverses the landscape, observing it with the curiosity of an explorer, oscillating between omniscient distance, and near-erotic detail. It sees, cuts, deconstructs and re-topologises the ever changing terrain and its inhabitants, creating a dual simultaneous perception; becoming a kind of animal itself.

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Eva Papamargariti (b.1987, Greece) is an artist based in London and holds a Masters Degree in Visual Communication Design from Royal College of Art, London.

Papamargariti’s practice focuses on time-based media (video, animations) but also printed material and installations that explore the relationship between digital space and (im)material reality. She is interested in the creation of 2D/3D rendered spaces, forms and geometries that provoke narrations based on the obscure simultaneous situations on the verge of digital and physical.

Theo Triantafyllidis (b. 1988, Greece) is an artist and architect based in Los Angeles. He holds an MFA from UCLA, Design | Media Arts, where he presented a guide called “how to everything” as his thesis, under scholarships from UCLA and the Onassis Foundation. He also holds a diploma of architecture from the National Technical University of Athens.

Humour, lush visuals and gaming tropes provide an entry point to his work. Computer simulations, improvisations and failures, awkward interactions and precarious physics are employed to produce visual gags. By manipulating emerging technologies, he is searching for their potential emotional impact and the designated limits of their use, often trying to break them. Webpages, virtual and augmented reality, games and interactive installations are his mediums of choice for this.

He has shown work in museums, including the Hammer Museum, the Armory Arts Museum, LA and various galleries such as Sargent’s Daughters, Young Projects, New Wight and Intelligentsia Gallery in North America, Europe and Asia. He has also participated in multiple online shows including thewrong.org, cloaque.org, and h0000ff.